Abstract
Belt conveyors are used extensively in the confectionery industry for transporting wrapped products between various phases of packaging such as flow-wrapping, collating and cartoning. A common way of changing the direction and orientation of travel of a single stream of wrapped units involves letting them discharge from the end of the conveyor and fall directly onto a second one set at 90° to the former. For controlled transfer, especially at high speed, the correct position and orientation of the unit on landing are important. The paper therefore sets out to analyse the dynamics of a prismatic, solid object discharging off a belt conveyor. The kinematic and dynamic equations which govern the motion of the object are first derived. Typical results from a computer program developed to predict the trajectories of rectangular objects for a given inclination and speed of the belt, and radius of the end roller are presented. The set-up of an experiment to verify the computer simulation is described and the comparison between analytical and experimental results is also discussed.